TŌKYŌ, January, 1902.
DEAR PROFESSOR,--About a week ago I received from Messrs. Wahlstrom and
Weilstrand--how strangely impressive these Northern names!--the dainty
"Exotica," with its sunrise and flying-swallows-design, and--my name
and private address in Japanese thereon!... I have sent a book for Mrs.
Hirn. If there are any of my books that you do not know, and would like
to have,--such as "Gleanings in Buddha-Fields" or "Youma"--I shall be
glad to have them sent you from America.
Thanks indeed for the photograph. I had imagined a face with the same
strong, precise lines, but in a blond setting. Yet some shades of fair
hair come out dark in photographs--so that I am not yet quite sure how
far my intuition miscarried. You are what I imagined--but a shade or two
stronger in line.
As for myself, I have no decent photograph at present.... I am horribly
disfigured by the loss of the left eye--so get photographed usually in
profile, or looking downward. I am a very small person; and when young,
was very dark, with the large alarming eyes of a myope.
I imagine that you have been tactfully kind in your prefatory notice of
me. I could only guess; but your letter confirms a number of my guesses.
The article by Zilliacus, to which you refer, I do not know: I cannot
read German in any event. The paper by Dr. Varigny in the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ was a mere fantasy,--unjust in the fact that it accredited
me with faculties and knowledge which I do not possess. The mere truth
of the matter is that I have had a rather painful experience of life,
for lack of the very qualities ascribed to me. (In American existence
one must either grind or be ground--I passed most of my time between the
grindstones.)
As for the choice of the subjects translated, it gave me most pleasure
to find some of my "Retrospectives" in that stern and sturdy tongue: it
was a bracing experience. The selections from "Glimpses" I should not
have advised; for the book is disfigured by faults of "journalistic"
style, and was written before I really began to understand, not Japan,
but how difficult it is to understand Japan. Nevertheless your judgement
in this particular was coincident with the general decision: the story
of the Shirabyoshi has, for example, appeared in four languages. It is
a story of the painter Bunchō,--and the merit is in no wise mine, as
I merely paraphrased a Japanese narrative. Don't think me ungrateful,
please, because I express my preferences thus. Really the experience of
trying to follow in Swedish the meaning of my "Serenade," etc., was more
than a delight,--and I imagined that the translator had successfully
aimed at reproducing in Swedish the rhythm of the English sentences.
I am happy in reading your words about the Japanese dances: as you have
seen a living example of one kind, you will not judge them all severely
hereafter. Of course there are dances and dances. I wish that you could
see the dancing of a pair of _miko_,--little Shintō maid-priestesses:
it is a simple performance, but as pleasing as a hovering of butterflies.
Your "Origins of Art" is a book that seems to have proved above the
range of some small critics; but you have been felt and appreciated in
higher spheres, I think. I was amused by the dullardism of some English
critics, evidently incapable of perceiving that the sterling value of
such a book is suggestive,--that it was intended to make men think, not
to furnish some intellectual lazy-bones with ready-made ideas....
Finland I know only through Léouzon Le Duc's delicious
prose-translation. I think of forests of birch, and lakes interminably
opening into lakes, and rivers that roar in lonely places, and
"liver-coloured earth." Wonder if the earth is really that colour?--the
ground of my garden, after a shower, is exactly "liver-colour"--a rich
reddish brown.